


Max Headroom: TechnoVision 3: Romance and Responsibility

by ElegantButler



Series: TechnoVision [3]
Category: Max Headroom - Fandom
Genre: Brain Injury, Coma, M/M, auto accident, loss of limb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 11:38:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16660441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElegantButler/pseuds/ElegantButler
Summary: As Bryce and his team work on making TechnoVision a great network, another friend from college brings love into the mix. But Bryce's new romance is suddenly cut short when a tragic accident takes place.





	1. Chapter 1

Max Headroom: TechnoVision

Book 3: Romance and Responsibility

 

##  Chapter 01

  
  


Bryce did not return to work that day. Rather, he and Jake spent the afternoon shopping and seeing the city. 

 

They left the car in a car park, and decided to walk off their lunch.

 

Bryce had, of course, seen the city many times over. But today, for some reason, it looked different to him. The once grungy walls now seemed different. They didn’t gleam. But the grunge was full of a history that he had once ignored. A history which Jake unfolded for him as they made their way through the streets and shops.

 

“My mother told me that this station,” Jake was saying as they reached Fenchurch Street Station, “was where a great many soldiers went off to their assignments from.  So many of them never came back.”

 

“I hope we never have another war,” Bryce told him. “Sometimes I wonder what the world was like before.”

 

“It was so much better,” Jake said. “At least that’s what my mom told me. She said there were plants and flowers, not just trees. And raking used to be this thing you did with the leaves that fell off the trees in autumn time.”

 

“Why would you rake leaves?” Bryce asked.

 

“I don’t mean with knife gloves,” Jake explained, chuckling. “A rake back then was a long-handled tool with a fan of long tines that a person would gather leaves with.”

 

“Oh,” Bryce said. “I see. And people would gather these leaves up and dispose of them.”

 

“That or fill up clothes to make scarecrows,” Jake told him.

 

“Sounds like fun,” Bryce said. “Making scarecrows I mean.”

 

“I bet it was,” Jake said. “Right now I can think of something even more fun.”

 

“Oh?” Bryce asked. “Meaning?”

 

“I’d like to take you home,” Jake told him. “I’d love to take you back to my place and make you my lover in earnest.”

 

“That sounds intriguing,” Bryce admitted. “How do you plan on achieving that little goal of yours?”

 

“By making love to you, Bryce Lynch,” Jake promised.

 

“And I should allow you to do that, why?” Bryce asked.

 

“Because I promise I will make it the most tender and enjoyable time you’ve ever experienced, dear Bryce.” Jake told him.

 

“I shall hold you to that promise,” Bryce said.

 

*****

 

Edison noticed that Bryce had not returned to work from his date. He wasn’t sure he liked Jake. Jenny had said that the boy had been a classmate from ACS and that Bryce had seemed to like him a lot during their school days.

 

“I bet he’s taking advantage of Bryce,” he told Theora. “See if you can locate them.”

 

“Edison,” Theora said. “That’s hardly appropriate use of our time. If Bryce wants to enjoy himself with Jake, you have no say in the matter. I remember when you got annoyed because I was seeing another controller. You can’t govern other people’s morality or their lives.”

 

“I just thought you were more respectable,” Edison said.

 

“I am respectable,” Theora told him, angrily. “Look, let’s just focus on the report.”

 

“Right,” Edison said, snappishly.  “This is Edison Carter coming to you live and direct on TechnoVision…”


	2. Chapter 2

##  Chapter 02

 

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Jake said, as he held the door to his house invitingly wide for Bryce.

 

“You have a house?” Bryce asked in amazement. Not many people owned houses nowadays. Not with the way the economy had been since the last world war.

 

“Nice, isn’t it?” Jake asked.  “Actually, it’s my mother’s. I’m house sitting for her while she’s away with my Aunt Mimosa.”

 

“You have an aunt named Mimosa?” Bryce asked.

 

“My great aunt Leslie named her that because she was born at breakfast time.”

 

Bryce shook his head in amusement.

 

“Hey,” Jake pointed out. “At least she didn’t name her Toast.”

 

They both laughed at this.

 

“Would you like something to drink?” Jake offered.

 

“I’d rather remember everything that happens here,” Bryce told him. “Whatever it is.”

 

“Whatever is going to be something amazing,” Jake promised. “Just like I said before.”

 

He led Bryce into the bedroom and closed the door.

 

*****

 

A block down the road from Jake’s mother’s house, an old car chugged at a red light.

 

Mrs. Wilma Anderson sat in the passenger seat, tapping her foot impatiently.  She was less than pleased with the way her second honeymoon had been cut short. They had got all the way to the airport in Norwich only to find that the hotel in Brussels had messed up on the booking and had scheduled them for the following week. 

 

“They could’ve at  _ least _ set us up with alternate arrangements,” she told her husband. 

 

“Or reimbursed us for the flights,” David Anderson replied as the light turned green.

 

*****

 

While this conversation had been going on, Jake had managed to coax Bryce out of his shoes and shirt.

 

Bryce lie on the bed, sighing softly, as Jake gently massaged his back, moving from his shoulders to the base of his spine.

 

“Didn’t I promise I’d make you feel good?” he asked.

 

“Mmm hmm,” Bryce purred. “But you understated the matter somewhat.”

 

Jake leaned down and kissed Bryce for the second time that day.

 

“You keep that up, and you’re going to spoil me,” Bryce told him.

 

There a sound, the merest hint of a noise.

 

“Did you hear something?” Bryce asked.

 

“Probably just the icemaker in the fridge,” Jake told him “It makes a little clunking sound every now and then.”

 

“Does it now?” asked a voice in a dangerous tone from the bedroom door.

 

“Dad?” Jake asked.

 

“Would you mind telling me what the hell you’re doing with this… slut?”

 

“It’s just a massage, Dad,” Jake told him. 

 

“And what would it have been if we hadn’t come home?” Mr. Anderson demanded.

 

“I guess I won’t ever have the pleasure of finding out,” Bryce remarked.

 

“Yes, you will, Bryce,” Jake promised as his mother joined them.

 

“Oh, is this Bryce Lynch, then? The little puppy who used to follow you around?” Mrs. Anderson asked, amusedly. “It’s so nice to meet you at last. My Jake was always so taken by your loyalty to him during those years.”

 

_ Puppy? _

 

“Was he now?” Bryce asked, smiling warmly. “That’s good to know.”

 

“You  _ knew _ our son was… is…?” Mr. Anderson asked. “And you never said anything?”

 

“It wasn’t for me to say,” his wife said, casually. “Our son’s choices are his and his alone as far as telling or not telling.”

 

“The word is  _ gay _ , dad,” Jake said. Now that his dad had only growled at him about it and hadn’t tossed him out of the house, he felt it was something he could at least speak about with only minor discomfort.

 

“And obviously this Bryce is also gay. Or is he transgender? You can never tell with names like that.”

 

“Bryce has always been male,” Jake said. “As far as his preference, I think he doesn’t have one.”

 

“Preferences?” Bryce asked.

 

“He means, dear,” Mrs. Anderson said, “whether you like men or women better.”

 

“Oh,” Bryce said. “I think I’d rather based my affections on personality rather than, as Jake put it, bits that go  _ ping _ .”

 

“A very good choice,” Mrs. Anderson agreed.  She turned to Jake. “I think he’s an ideal partner for you, Jake. You really should think about seriously courting him.”

 

“Wilma,” David groaned, “Don’t encourage them!”

 

“Oh, David,” Wilma laughed. “I’m kidding. Though I do think Bryce would make a great son-in-law some day.”

 

“Mom!” Jake exclaimed, laughing. “I haven’t seen him since college. And we were eleven and ten back then!”

 

“You certainly seemed comfortable with him when we walked in,” his father pointed out.

 

“Well, that’s true,” Jake admitted. 

 

“Don’t I get a say in the matter?” Bryce asked.

 

“Of course, dearest,” Jake told him.

 

David Anderson rolled his eyes at his son’s antics.

 

“Jake, I think you’re sweet, and I’d love to be your boyfriend,” he said.

 

“But…?” Jake asked, expecting a catch.

 

“If you’re going to court me, then you have to ask my family.”

 

“I thought you weren’t on speaking terms with your parents,” Jake said.

 

“Not them,” he said. “I meant Blank Reg and Dominique. My real parents.”

 

“You’re kidding,” Jake said. “When did you find out?”

 

“The week before I went to ACS,” Bryce said. “That’s why the Lynches and I stopped talking. I would’ve dropped Lynch from my name, but my association with Network 23 and ACS made it necessary to stay in the System.”

 

“Alright,” Jake agreed. “I’ll meet them. If that’s what it takes to make you mine, I’ll walk barefoot on razor blades.”

 

“Razor blades?” Bryce asked. “I’m not that easy to win. If you want my heart, you’ve got to walk barefoot on Legos.”

 

“Wow,” Jake said, chuckling. “You don’t make it easy on a guy!”

 

“So,” Mrs. Anderson said. “Shall I put you both down for dinner? I’d love to have a chance to get to know my son’s true love.”

 

“Wilma…” David said, warningly.

 

“Sure thing, Mom,” Jake said. “We’ll come back after we talk to Bryce’s parents.”

 

## 


	3. Chapter 3

##  Chapter 03

 

“Reg,” Edison asked Blank Reg, “besides Orville’s students, how many teenagers and children are there in the Fringes?”

 

“It’s not easy to say,” Reg said. “The nature of being a Blank is that there are no official records. And not every person in the Fringes is a Blank. Breughal and Mahler for example are Fringers, but not Blanks.”

 

“And Dominique?” Edison asked.

 

“Oh, she’s a Blank alright,” Reg explained.

 

“But her credit tube…” Edison said, confused.

 

“Registered under the name of Big Time Television,” Reg told him.

 

“Company account,” Dom explained. 

 

The view-phone sounded.

 

Dom checked it and saw that Bryce was calling. There was a boy standing not too far behind him, waving cheerfully. Dom could tell he was of Bryce’s calibre though he reminded her a bit of Huck Finn.

 

Dom laughed. 

 

“Hello, Bryce,” she said.

 

Edison turned and was about to go talk to Bryce when Reg pulled him back.

 

“I think we should let them talk,” he told Edison. “Come, I’ve got something to tell you.” he looked at Dom as if to ask her some unspoken question. When she nodded, he pulled Edison outside.

 

“What’s going on?” Edison asked.

 

“Dom and I have been together for about twenty years,” Reg explained. “We became Blanks together at the time of the war because I didn’t want to go off to war when our child was about to be born.”

 

“Your child,” Edison asked. Then realization dawned on him. “You mean Bryce?”

 

Reg nodded.

 

“Dom adored him,” he told Edison. “But when we lost our home during the war, and had no way of getting a new one as Blanks, the government decided that Bryce would have a better chance at survival with a family that had a proper home.”

 

“The same government that shifted Theora from one state home to another,” Edison recalled. “Any idea how many times Bryce was shifted around?”

 

“Fortunately for him, they recognized his talent pretty quickly. The Lynches were the first family to take him in, and they fell in love with him and his capabilities in a heartbeat.”

 

Reg took a picture out of his pocket. It was of a scruffy-looking boy of about two years of age.

 

“Cute,” Edison agreed. “Does he know?”

 

“Yeah,” Reg nodded. “He knows.”

  
  


*****

 

“It’s nice to see you again, Bryce,” Dom told him. “Who’s your friend?”

 

“This is Jake,” Bryce told her. “Jake, this is my mum, Dominique.”

 

“It’s nice to meet you, Jake,” Dom told him. “Please, call me Dom. Only businessmen call me Dominique. Well, them and politicians.”

 

“Dom,” Jake said, earning a smile from the Fringer woman. 

 

“Now, what can I do for you, son?” she asked Bryce.

 

“I’d like to drop by if you’re not too busy,” Bryce told her.

 

“I’m rather surprised that you’re not,” Dom said. “But sure, come on over. It’ll be good to see you again.”

 

*****

 

Edison was still at BIg Time when Bryce arrived ten minutes later.

 

“Hello, Bryce,” he said. “Look, I want to apologize for…”

 

“No need,” Bryce told him. “I’ve met someone more suitable. If I had gone on falsely believing that I had a chance with you, things would not have turned out so well.”

 

Edison smiled.

 

“Edison,” Bryce said. “This is Jake Anderson. He’s just been hired at TechnoVision, though I’m not yet sure what show he’ll be on.”

 

“I was hoping to get an educational show,” Jake admitted.

 

“I think we can work that out,” Bryce told him.

 

Dominique approached them. She hugged Bryce for a moment, then stepped back to give him a lookover before giving another lookover to Jake.

 

“So, Jake,” she asked. “What can I do for you? Bryce said you want to talk to me about something important.”

 

“I’d like your permission to court him,” Jake explained. “I asked him, and he said I had to get your consent first.”

 

“I see,” Dom said. “Well, I was hoping for grandchildren…” she said, hesitantly.

 

“There’s always Ovu-vat,” Bryce reminded her. “We could do a gene-splice if it came to it.”

 

“I guess that’s that hurdle overcome, then,” Dom smiled. “Well, let’s see what your father has to say. If he approves, then I’m okay with it, too.” 

 

Dominique, Bryce and Jake joined Reg and Edison who were listening to some old LP records while Reg played them for the Big Time TV viewers.

 

“That was Mike and the Mechanics,” Reg told his audience. “Next up, a weird little number by the Residents.”

 

A new video popped up on the screen accompanied by music as it played from the LP. 

 

“Reg,” Dom said. “Our friend Jake has something he’d like to ask you.”

 

“Go on, then,” Reg offered.

 

“I’d like your permission to court Bryce,” Jake requested, a slight nervousness in his voice. 

 

“And why should I grant it?” Reg asked, cautiously.

 

Jake smiled. Reg clearly wanted to protect his son. That was something he could work with.

 

“Because,” he said, “I love him.”

 

“You’ve known him for a day,” Reg said. “How can you know you love him?”

 

“I knew him back at ACS,” Jake explained. “He was so cute back then, always following me around like a stray puppy.”

 

“There you go comparing me to a puppy again,” Bryce laughed. “I was never that needy.”

 

“A kitten, then,” Jake corrected himself. “And an adorable one at that.”

 

Bryce blushed.

 

Reg laughed, seeing the look of happy discomfiture on his son’s face. That expression alone led to his decision.

 

“Of course you have permission,” he told Jake. “It’s clear that my son adores you.”

 

“Thank you, sir,” Jake said. He turned to Bryce. “Would you do me the honor of accompanying me to tomorrow night’s Scumball Game?”

 

“I would be glad to,” Bryce replied.

 

“For tonight,” Reg said to Bryce, “Your mother and I would like you and your swain to join us for dinner at Zik Zak. I know it’s not fancy, but…”

 

“I don’t mind,” Jake said. “I like their crunch fries.”

 

“Well spoken,” Dom told him. “They are quite good.”

 

“No talk about crunch fries until we get there,” Reg warned. “You’re making me hungry.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

##  Chapter 04

 

As the sun came up over the hills to the east of the city, Jake Anderson awoke in his four poster bed, gazing back down at the sleeping figure still lying prone with his arms tucked up under the pillow, sighing softly.

 

His first night with Bryce had been filled with both joy and tears. Bryce, bold as brass in the world of business now that he had his own network to run, was shier than a daisy in the bedroom.

 

“Bryce,” Jake said, stroking Bryce’s ear with the edge of his finger. “You awake?”

 

Bryce murmured as he drifted back to wakefulness.

 

“No.”

 

“Liar,” Jake laughed. He kissed Bryce softly.

 

“Jake,” Bryce whispered. “I’m sorry about…”

 

“Not being ready?” Jake smiled, warmly. “No apologies needed. You’ll be ready one day. I can wait until then.”

 

“I’d like to try again,” Bryce said, shyly.

 

“No you wouldn’t,” Jake told him, drawing Bryce into his arms. “Not now at any rate. When the time is right. I should’ve realized by the way you were shaking so badly that you were scared.”

 

“Everything was going so well,” Bryce admitted. “Then I saw… I just got so scared. I want to please you, but I don’t think I can take…”

 

Jake kissed Bryce’s forehead, nose, and lips.

 

“You’ll be able to when you’re ready,” he promised. “Until then, we can wait.”

 

Bryce couldn’t help feel a sense of warmth toward Jake. The older teen had promised he would make Bryce happy, and he seemed to want to do everything he could to keep that promise.

 

*****

 

Bryce sat on the edge of the bed thinking of how much his life had changed since he had left Network 23. No longer under the thrall of Ben Cheviot, he had grown a great deal emotionally. His feelings toward sex were no longer ambivalent, mostly thanks to his relationship with Jake. It was in that aspect that he felt he had matured the most. Nobody in his entire time at Network 23 had even spoken to him or given him the legendary “talk”. Instead, they had kept him in the dark, no doubt hoping to keep him innocent.  But then, he had gotten fed up at being manipulated and had left Network 23, opting instead to create his own Network. And it had been during that time that he had met his lover Jake, who over the few months they spent together, showed him the tenderness that helped get him through his fears and to find his way into paradise.

 

Now, just shy of his seventeenth birthday, Bryce found himself facing the biggest decision of his life.  

 

Jake Anderson had just proposed.

  
  


*****

 

_ Oh my god,  _ he thought .  _ What do i say? What do I do?  _

 

It was not an easy question to answer. It was true that he loved Jake. But he really barely knew him. THey hadn’t even been dating for a year. It had, in fact, been only three months. And Bryce was just reaching seventeen. What if Jake wanted a long and drawn out engagement? What if he wanted to marry right away? What kind of wedding would they have? He was sure they wouldn’t elope. Not with Jake having gone out of his way to ask for permission to court Bryce.

 

And what would Reg and Dom say when they learned that Bryce had fully given himself over to Jake. Indeed, what would Jake’s family say? His father hadn’t seemed quite as accepting of their relationship as his mother had.

 

_ Come on, Bryce! Think! That’s what you do best isn’t it? Think? You can come up with something! Do you love him? Of course you  do! So why is this such a tough question to answer? _

 

Jake watched him, but said nothing. He hoped he hadn’t gone too fast. Had he driven Bryce away with the unexpected proposal?

 

“Bryce?” he asked.

 

Bryce bit his lower lip, still trying nervously to come up with the best answer he could. He knew what his heart was telling him, and he always could hear his mind telling him how illogical that answer would be. If only he could get the two to agree. And if only he could get them to agree on something that would make him and Jake both happy.

 

Jake could tell that Bryce was having trouble deciding. Knew that it was because of the logical side of the boy’s mind. The side of him that kept preventing him from having fun if it felt something was too silly.

 

Jake decided he would teach that side of Bryce exactly what fun was. 

 

Bryce smiled after another moment.

 

“Yeah,” he told Jake. “I think I’d like that.”

 

“Great,” Jake said. “I can’t wait to tell the others. Everyone is going to be so pleased.”

 

“You think so?” Bryce asked. “I mean, I hope so. I mean…  Well, the most important person to me right now is you, of course. But I also hope that…”

 

“Everyone we know approves of our relationship. Some more than others, I grant you. But the important thing is that we’re getting married.”

 

“How are we going to tell the others?” Bryce asked.

 

“We can tell them right now,” Jake answered. “No need for anything fancy. We’ll just call and tell them all about it.”

 

“It seems tactless to tell them over the phone,” Bryce said. “Let’s do it in person.”

 

“You’re right,” Jake said. “We shouldn’t deprive your mum the right to give her only son a hug when he breaks the news of his engagement.”

 

Bryce smiled.

 

The young soon-to-be newlyweds got into Jake’s car and headed to the last known location of Big Time Television. 


	5. Chapter 5

##  Chapter 05

 

Jake turned the corner half a block away from Big Time. He was traveling at the speed limit, his eyes on the road, while half of his mind was on Bryce and their engagement. 

 

He saw the lorry swerve to miss a careless cyclist who came barreling through the intersection, and swerved his own car so the lorry would miss him and Bryce as well. The results were far less than successful.

 

Jake’s car hit the corner of a building causing it to ricochet back into the path of the truck which colliding into the passenger side and pushed it several hundred feet before finally stopping.

 

Jake tried to catch his breath, but found it nigh to impossible. He guessed that he must have been injured by colliding with the steering wheel. 

 

“Bryce?” he coughed. 

  
There was no answer.

 

Next to him, Bryce was pinned. Shards of glass from the shattered passenger door window were imbedded in his neck, head, and left shoulder while his chest was crushed by the dashboard which had been jammed down onto his seat, nearly severing his right leg at the upper thigh.

 

*****

 

“My baby!” Dom cried out as she and Blank Reg rushed into the med-center trailed by Edison Carter and Theora Jones. “Where’s my boy?” she asked the receptionist.

 

“Bryce Lynch,” Edison Carter explained.

 

“They’re just bringing him in now,” she told them, pointing at the arriving team who was rushing in a gurney with a very bloody patient on it.

 

“Bryce!” Dom cried out, rushing to meet it. She saw the condition her son was in and tears began pouring down her face. “Oh, no! No… please. Don’t let him die!”

 

“We’ll do everything we can,” the chief paramedic for the team told her as he rushed Bryce into the triage section, Dom following insistently beside them.

 

*****

 

The Andersons sat beside Jake’s bed as he lay in recovery. 

 

Jake had suffered a punctured lung from a broken ribcage and a bruised stomach along with a fractured collarbone.

 

“Honey,” his mother said in that too-gentle tone of one about to give very bad news.

 

“Bryce…” his father began.

 

Jake’s heart nearly shattered. “Is he… dead?” he heard himself ask.

 

“No, dear,” His mother said. “But he’s in a coma and he’s suffered traumatic brain injury. Until he wakes up, we have no idea how it will affect him. And there’s a strong chance he might never…”

 

Mrs. Anderson broke down, her husband putting a comforting hand on her shoulder and drawing her near.

 

“We were going to be married,” Jake said, dully. “We were on our way to tell you. I hadn’t given him a ring yet. I was going to buy it with my next credits. I wanted to get him an opal. His birthstone.”

 

“It would’ve made him happy,” Mrs. Anderson smiled, sadly. 

 

“You might still be able to,” Mr. Anderson said. “Don’t give up on him too quickly.”

 

“I want to see him,” Jake said.

 

“You can’t get up yet,” Mr. Anderson told him. “You have to lie flat for a few days until your lung finishes healing.”

 

******

 

Jake lie in bed that evening, staring at the ceiling above him. It was supposed to be a happy night. One filled with laughter and joy as he and Bryce celebrated their anniversary with their families.

 

Oh, if only he’d stopped instead of swerving. If only that cyclist hadn’t been so reckless. If only… if only…

 

If only he could find peace. But it was neither in his heart nor his mind. Instead, he found only pain. Both mental and physical. He hadn’t been able to see Bryce since the accident. The nurses and doctors, even his and Bryce’s families, had done everything they could to keep them apart. 

 

“But he’s alive, isn’t he?” Jake asked each of them. “Everyone says he is.”  He wanted to give them all a piece of his mind. It wasn’t right to keep the truth from him. If Bryce was dead, he wanted to know so that he could grieve properly.

 

“He’s alive,” Mrs. Anderson had said. 

 

An hour later, the doctors and nurses had all told him the same thing. Though they seemed quite unhappy when they said it.

 

*****

 

Dominique sat in a chair beside Bryce’s bed, listening sadly to the sounds of the machines that monitored his vital signs. The tears that fell down her face were from her inability to make up her mind. But it was the hardest choice she’d ever had to make.

 

Seventeen years ago, she had decided to become a Blank so that she and Reg could stay together during the war with their baby boy. 

 

“You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that,” one friend had warned her. But she hadn’t listened. Hadn’t wanted to be sent away from her husband or their child.

 

Then, when little Bryce had been only two, the war had destroyed their house, and with them being Blanks, they had no way of getting a new one. So Bryce had been taken from them. Eventually, he’d been placed with a family named Lynch who had discovered his technological talents and had got him into ACS, the Academy of Computer Sciences.

 

There Bryce had met Jake, Jenny, and all of his friends, though he’d kept emotionally distant from them in his childhood, opening up to them at last in the past year.

 

Now, just shy of his seventeenth birthday, he lie in a coma. His leg had been temporarily amputated so that the medical center could focus on his brain injury. It was being kept in the cryo unit so that if he did make it through, reconstructive surgery could at least be attempted.

 

“Please, stay with me,” she whispered. “Don’t got to heaven yet. You’re going to wish you hadn’t. There’s so much more for you to experience here first. You just wait. Jake was asking about you earlier. He loves you so much. It would be sad for all of us if you left us. At least wake up long enough to say goodbye if you must go.”

  
  


******

 

In the middle of the night, the machines kept the count of a boy’s vital signs.

 

“Beep beep beep.” went the heart monitor in its steady rhythm.

 

“Boooooop beep. Booooop beep.” went the EEG machine, its rhythm far slower than it should have been. 

 

The machines sounded neither hopeful or hopeless. They just beat their cold rhythms. 

 

A single figure sat near the bed, her body slumped forward in sleep, lulled into her own unconsciousness by the steady beeps and boops of the machines.

 

Beeps and boops which sometimes became steadier and sometimes become more chaotic. As if the boy in the bed were fighting against some medical demons that wanted to drag down a mind that had accomplished so many things.

 

Dominique opened her eyes and heard the sound of the machines as their frantic/calm/frantic sounds beat non-too-steadily one minute, and in perfect harmony the next. 

 

“That’s right, Bryce,” she whispered. “You fight back! Don’t give in, my dear son. Don’t you dare give in!”

 

She could’ve sworn for just a moment, that Bryce’s hand clutched her fingers. But he did not wake up or make any other movements, so she finally decided it was just her imagination.

 

The machines slowed dangerously at one point. So much so that Dom had pressed the call button and a crash team had come running.

 

It had been touch and go for several long minutes, the count of the machines slower and slower… then for a long moment there was complete silence. 

  
Finally they began their steady rhythm once again.

 

“Does this mean he might wake up?” Dom asked the doctor who had overseen the crash team.

 

“He might,” the doctor said, cautiously. “Just remember, we don’t yet know how his injury will affect him.  There is going to be some physical effects. We talked about those. But we don’t know if there will be any intellectual problems or memory loss. Plus he’s going to have to deal with the potential loss of his leg or learning to use it again if it can be replaced.”

 

“We’ll all be there for him,” Dom said. “Reg and I, Edison and Theora, and Jake and his parents.”

 

*****


	6. Chapter 6

##  Chapter 06

 

“Where am I,” Bryce demanded, looking around.

 

There was nobody there. His new fiance, Jake Anderson, was nowhere to be found. This was odd as he and Jake had just been in the older boy’s car on the way to announce their engagement.

 

The car wasn’t there either. In fact, this place looked like the population had never heard of any vehicle outside of a horse and carriage, assuming carriages existed.

 

It was something out of a medieval fantasy. Was he dreaming. No. Impossible.

 

_ I don’t dream,  _ he reminded himself.  _ I must be hallucinating. Think! Bryce Lynch! Think! What is the last thing you remember?  _

 

Maybe this was his memory. Some guarded castle he would have to symbolically explore in order to discover some lost fragments. Maybe something to terrible had happened that it had created a quest for him to undergo as a way for him to discover it at a comfortable rate.

 

The castle stood off in the distance, just beyond a forest whose depth Bryce could not discern.

 

_ Just one way to find out. _

 

Taking a deep breath, Bryce nodded to himself and moved forward, making his way toward the thick forest.

 

As he approached the trees, he could see that some of them were silver in color, their branches swaying in a non-existent wind. He wondered what they represented? If they were the electrical currents in his brain. He wondered why all of them weren’t silver. Some, a great many disturbingly, were still and dark. Not black, but as near to black as grey could be.

 

He wondered what this said about the state of his mind. Was his brain dying? And was this quest some way of reawakening it? Or was he reading too much into it? Maybe none of this was logical and his brain, in a coma, was just finally having a long-sought-after vacation from him constantly bombarding it with reason.

 

He reached the edge of the silver and grey forest and paused.

 

_ Do you really want to go in there? You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. You don’t know what’s in there. You don’t know who’s in there, or indeed if anyone is in there. We could even be dealing with Fantasy here, and that’s one of your weakest subjects. You’ll be out of your depth if that’s the case. Do you want to risk it? _

 

Bryce stood there, for the first time that he could recall, true indecision was in his mind. This was not a simple morality vs logic argument. In a case like that, you had pure facts on both sides and that was something he could work with. 

 

Fantasy had no pure facts he could work with. Everyone’s dragon was different. Everyone’s unicorn was different. He had never studied them in any detail, having only half-listened to the stories of his childhood before he’d gone to ACS at the age of ten.

 

The prospect of facing something he had no knowledge of in a possible quest to save his own mind, or at least keep it sane, was terrifying.

 

_ Am I still sane? _ He wondered.

  
  
  


....to be continued in Book 4

 


End file.
